The Games Industry Is Completely Broken, and This Is Why

With news of Microsoft closing Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks (makers of much loved Hi-Fi Rush), it's clear the previous markers of success don't apply. When studios aren't safe even when they make a hit, something is deeply, deeply wrong.
Apologies to Hbomberguy for ripping off the title format.
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I am angry at the state of the games industry. Even when the higher ups at game companies were at their greediest, you could usually at least understand the logic behind their decisions. With the recent, baffling news that Microsoft is to shutter Tango Gameworks (among others), despite the studio providing Xbox a bonafide smash hit in the form of Hi-Fi Rush (on top of countless other layoffs and closures from studios making some of the most successful games ever, such as Naughty Dog with The Last of Us), that logic seems to have gone out of the window. In this analysis piece, I discuss how we got here, how the industry is becoming increasingly hostile towards not only art but seemingly monetary success, and the indie devs and studios like Larian and Supergiant proving that it doesn't have to be this way.
The games industry is broken-some might say beyond repair.
0:00 - The games industry makes no sense right now
0:51 - The baffling closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks
2:42 - This is destroying the industry
4:06 - The ones who remain
5:13 - The music industry and the importance of creative control
7:21 - People want more sustainable games
8:23 - Supergiant can do it, why can't you?
9:08 - The Baldur's Gate 3 studio is (technically) still indie
10:29 - You must retain control
11:47 - Outro
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Animated text intro by Isaac Holland - / drazgames

[@sageoftruth]

Hi-Fi Rush, a game about corporate mismanagement, turned out to be pretty prophetic.

[@phillipalleva-cox3903]

I had that same thought today

[@Argusthecat]

We can only hope that Microsoft's management follows the example of the villain from that game.

[@Ehh.....]

Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk 2077, Hi-Fi Rush, HellDivers 2, FF7, its always the games with strong critiques of capitalism that are usually in someway undermined or at least heavily tarnished by their respective publisher/studio's insane obsessions with it.

[@thejetparadox]

this needs to be pinned, deadass

[@jeffrey1025]

@@Ehh..... Corporatism =/= Capitalism. These are two distinct economic models, and most of these games are critiquing corporatism, though most people don't know what that is so they just say capitalism.

[@luwuni]

We live in a cyberpunk dystopia without all the cool stuff

[@waarschijn]

Nonsense. Stop consuming depressing media like this channel. It's bad for your mental health. Things are amazingly great and getting better every year.

[@Finn959]

@@waarschijnno they’re shit but consuming this stuff will lead to more suffering

[@TheSkaOreo]

@@waarschijn “if you just ignore all the bad stuff, then everything is great all of the time!”

[@davidrevillii5353]

@@TheSkaOreoI mean, devil’s advocate a bit, but it is better than having to make peace with the fact that the only way out of this fun little horror show we have here is to be some strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees, to quote Billie Holiday.

[@waarschijn]

@@TheSkaOreo Not what I said and you know it. You have to dig to find the bad stuff and that's what a lot of channels are doing.

[@ssj4922]

Man, it's really depressing now that a game could come out to critical acclaim, receive incredible financial success, win multiple categories at entire award shows and have wide regard from all corners of the internet with everyone highly anticipating their next game only to get closed down. Can't believe a studio can do literally everything right and _still_ get laid off like this

[@Tacom4ster]

have you consider anarchism?

[@the7observer]

it is the cancer in public companies: investors that demand unsustainable profits and executives that focuses solely in administration, trend chasing and treat their most important employees that work in creative proccess like Boeing treated their quality managers and inspectors

[@csabaszabo6859]

@@Tacom4ster FUCK YEAH! Anarcho capitalism rules 😎

[@Tacom4ster]

@@csabaszabo6859 that's an oxymoron, there's no such thing as anarcho capitalism. Read Kropotkin

[@masterzoroark6664]

Because people allowed the mindset of "Line must go up" to thrive- sry, it's political and this is a symptom, act now because "being cozy with how things are" won't last ya long

[@samuelantoniocastillomeza5034]

I'm so heartbroken for Tango Gameworks. By the end of Hi-Fi RUSH, there's a song called Making Things Is Hard, refering to the developement of the game. Hurts a lot listening to it now.

[@SaberRexZealot]

Haven’t played it yet but always respected Tango. I love The Evil Within games - before Capcom got their shit together, they were some of the few games keeping the spirit of Resident Evil alive. Besides that, they’ve never made a bad game and were very experimental. It blows my mind that a studio founded by someone as influential as Shinji Mikami had to close.

[@bubbag3332]

yeah havent played it too but just knowing that all devs do this and now they're no longer more is just sad, really sad, and you can tell like they said, proud of the game, sucks man

[@Subpar1O1]

Hi-Fi is genuinely my favourite game ever and I will never understand Microsoft. They want "more games like Hi-Fi Rush" yet destroy the studio that made it?? How does that even compute? Between this and Sony's Helldivers mess it makes me believe the higher ups have no clue what they're doing.

[@OhNoTwist]

I'm betting the reason Tango got sold is because they are outside the US. The tax implications of software development outside the US might not be tenable suddenly. Xbox likely doesn't want to admit it blindsided them.

[@tachikoma81]

End of the day gamepass are game studio killers

[@DeadJack1999]

Im starting to think nintendo sperating themselves from the larger industry was the right choice

[@TheSkaOreo]

It absolutely was the right choice. You can say a lot about Nintendo from a legal perspective in how they approach fan content and emulators...but in terms of gaming, they're on the right path.

[@IsaacSperrow]

Japanese studios are also more hush hush. So even if there are issues internally, we are less likely to hear about it. However, if we do hear about it, then you know its really bad.

[@TheSkaOreo]

@@IsaacSperrow I mean if Nintendo was firing people on the level that western developers have been doing, or even to what Square Enix have been doing, we would absolutely hear about it. At the end of the day, Nintendo is a business, they are of course very interested in their profit margins; they are not my friend. However, how they've handled things have set them up for success long term and we're seeing that play out now.

[@auroraPalace_]

​​@@TheSkaOreo i learned recently that one of the reasons nintendo cannot lay off workers like our game studios, is because it is not legally allowed in japan. so to some extent, we have to consider what it is legal for companies to do. and i don't think shutting down your small studios like this should be legal.

[@AmanoKagaseo]

@@auroraPalace_ Just try implementing similar laws in the US, the Land of the Free. There would be riots under the guise of "muh freedom."

[@TheNarcissistCookbook]

as a fellow scot who saw their friends signed by a major label, make an album, then have the major label decide not to release the album, then refused to let the band perform live even though the label didn't want them, i was like "huh do we both know the same band?" and then i remembered no, that's just how the music industry works.

[@DarthBiomech]

I know somebody who were outright banned from performing a specific genre of music, _ever,_ and they also have been forced to delete EVERYTHING they've done from the Internet - stuff made _before_ the signing of the contract. Pirate label music, people, pirate the fuck out of it, if you don't - you're supporting modern chattel slavery.

[@MadMadNomad]

Out of curiosity, when this kinda bullshit happens, can they at least change their name and keep performing together? I mean, obviously you're losing good songs and whatever name recognition you may have built, but if you tell your fans you'd think they'd keep following musicians they like, regardless of what they're called. I'm just curious if a contract can literally forbid artists from doing other projects (With the same people) because if so, that's EXTRA bullshit.

[@TheNarcissistCookbook]

@@MadMadNomad it depends on the contract, but it's super normal for major labels to have clauses preventing you from appearing as part of other acts (thus why featured artists often have 'appearing courtesy of Butthole Records' in the credits) or even from appearing in non musical projects like podcasts or starting a streaming channel for example. They quite literally own you.

[@S_raB]

Like Prince said, "I'm a slave."

[@jp9707]

It's a bit out of left field, but this also happened to Jane Austen (the author) - she sold her work to a publisher, he never published it, and it took her about a decade to get the rights to the manuscript back so she could get it published. This sort of practice has been going on for literally hundreds of years 😕

[@scottgrey3337]

The problem with major corporations in gaming is that there's no such thing as too much profit. They'll never stop a studio and say "you've made enough money, here's some leeway to make a better experience, treat your employees better, or just paces yourselves." Any normal product could be monetized more, and any hyper-monetized product making record-breaking profits is just proof that it can be squeezed harder. There is no end point, just "better than the year before," which was better than the year before that and so on. Making money has always been a part making games, if only to pay the bills, make the next project possible, and (hopefully) reward everyone involved for everything they put into the project. But the dynamic of "make a product, make money" is increasingly being treated as just "make money" by the ones calling the shots, with the idea that you actually need to have an enjoyable, quality product to sell being treated like an annoying obstacle to all those profits. Indie games are absolutely full of talent and creativity, but I also think they're a breath of fresh air because they're operating off the premise of actually making a game, instead of mandating overworked employees bump the next profit margin before they get laid off for the CEO's next bonus.

[@itcouldbelupus2842]

Corporate minded people will only make this sort of monetization and business practice worse as long as they control how games are made

[@masterzoroark6664]

You can even see this mindset in reporting on games- when the slight ddrop in players is reported as "game is dying", even tho it's a comparison between the standard level of players and the big spike at release. TLDR. It's a symptom of broken systems we live in, not just games, and people should start acting at large and not just sit around hoping that it will fix itself or accept another "convinience" at expense of everything else.

[@zach7]

@@masterzoroark6664 yeah it's a symptom of runaway capitalism without any end goal in sight other than number/line go up forever exponentially forever always and right away. Almost all of humanity's problems are being caused by myopic views from the rich who do not care for or are even against sustainability and stability for anything that doesn't directly effect them on a personal level. The problem I also find is that saying this invites tons of bad faith arguments of people defending capitalism as if the only other option is communism that results in authoritarian states. With proper protections and workers rights you don't need to become a single party authoritarian state to achieve this, things are allowed to be better. Taxing the rich at a much higher rate than the disappearing middle class in the States for one thing would be a start. Hell this merger with activision/blizzard and microsoft should have never happened as it was a catalyst for more lay offs as mergers tend to create. It is a failure of the system at large to protect anyone who isn't already a C-suite or above. It is ridiculous.

[@Sci-Fi_Freak_YT]

I think it really depends on the people who are running the company. For example my father worked for the PGA Tour Golf Company for nearly 20 years. In that time he built up relationships with his clients and the people he worked with. Prioritizing a “customer first” approach to the business. And the owners did for a time too. However the moment leadership changed to a “profit first” business the people who cared about the customer experience slowly left or were fired. If you have the right people you can have a company that is headed by a “that’s enough profit” mindset but unfortunately those are practically impossible to find these days due to “get rich quick” culture invading everything.

[@masterzoroark6664]

@@Sci-Fi_Freak_YT Well, yeah But you need to make sure it"s an overall atmpsphere and ethics thing, not a centralized dictatorship thing- one where when the leader with ideals leaves the place goes to shit because reins are no longer present.

[@fun_kay]

I'm so viscerally angry at everything i love being destroyed by middle managers for the sake of capital.

[@NPK476]

You could always put down the controller and get a real hobby if it upsets you that much.

[@NoName......]

You don't HAVE to buy AAA games...

[@fun_kay]

@@NoName...... that's so true you're so smart wish I thought of that wowowow love heart emoji

[@mduckernz]

@@NPK476Other hobbies are just as poisoned by the same systems, really It’s systemic

[@theviniso]

​@@NoName...... We should all pirate AAA games and pay for indies. Voting with our wallets.

[@incontinentia3119]

As someone who works in the games industry, the games industry was broken for a long time. Covid exacerbated those issues to the point where it couldn't be ignored anymore. Turns out, when you think the good times will last forever you stop thinking about sustainability.

[@00101001000000110011]

the games industry has been broken SINCE IT WAS BORN. how ppl fail to realize this is pretty telling of the root of the issues.

[@giandomenicomartorelli8069]

@@00101001000000110011 If you mean that game industry is broken since it was born because it follows neoliberal capitalism, ok, that's an intrinsic truth. But you have to admit that the situation is worsening lately.

[@incontinentia3119]

@@00101001000000110011 It's an entertainment industry that masquerades as a tech industry. Somehow it's inherited the worst of both worlds.

[@kelvinjohnson9330]

No Since X360...hmm maybe Dreamcast.

[@mitchjames9350]

@@00101001000000110011 how so?

[@Mefrius]

I think that studios, gamers and media should promote game design and game designers as much as they promote film directors. Thanks to this, the very name of the creator will work as an advertisement, and games will have a greater focus on how the game is played, and not on the visuals or all sorts of gimmicks, which takes a noticeable toll on the wallet. It's really funny to say, but industry needs more people like Kojima

[@Sci-Fi_Freak_YT]

I honestly have started to do this myself, for example Toxic Commando is a game coming out right and it does look kinda generic (Left 4 Dead) but the moment I saw John Carpenter on there my excitement went through the roof (he made The Thing from 1982). Or when the Callisto Protocol was coming out I was excited because it was from Glen Schofield from Dead Space, now that game was a disappointment but I will still check out the next game he does because of his involvement in the OG Dead Space.

[@petarrakoc1416]

It’s interesting in film they’ve been trying get rid of it for the last couple of decades. Which i think is so misguided, they have a problem with ‘auteurs’ and think they are sticking up for the little guy(not that all people on the team shouldn’t get credit) but i think they’ve done more harm than good. When we give people directors,actors,creators,etc less power we really are giving the power to all the money people.

[@Drstrange3000]

This is why I've mostly been paying attention to Nintendo as of late and Lower budget AAA/AA and a few Indie titles here and there.

[@egirlegirlegirl]

this is how it used to be in the 90s

[@maybepolly_]

​@@egirlegirlegirlthis! we used to know at least the names of the most famous game designers. miyamoto, aonuma, kojima, and even the bad ones (peter molyneux, im looking at you)

[@ManleyReviews]

This year has been the most assbackwards corporate disasters for gaming I've seen in the history of the twenty first century. Just unbelievable

[@ibrahim5463]

Didn't excpect to see you here, have a nice day and hopefully this shit gets better and start going forwards

[@TheOrian34]

And we're not even halfway.

[@Gigi-zr6hp]

Recency bias. People said the same when the disaster launch of the much hyped NMS happened. And then the disastrous lunch of Cyberpunk as well. Then people refuse to acknowledge BG3 since it's not considered AAA

[@supinearcanum]

The other industry to look at is Boeing & the aircraft industry, which was captured by corporate raiders in the 80's and since then has had a steady & noticeable decline in quality and staff morale as they get ground up in a system that looks for constant quarterly profit improvements over EVEN THE PRODUCT ITSELF! These investor class only systems are toxic to every industry they get control over because they at the end of the day, do not care about the industry or understand it, they only care about profits. They are lords who make peasants plant cash crops on land that needs to lie fallow and over food crops, and then get surprised when the famine comes, and often get to bail while all the workers suffer. No industry should be run by people who's only motive is profit and only expertise in the industry is a business degree and friends they made in a frat at college. They are the NFT guys, looking to pump hype for the bag before dumping it in someone else's hands or into the river while they run off with the cash, and all of us get screwed.

[@00101001000000110011]

this is not a good comparison. airline industry is of national and international public interest, not just private interest. governments intervene heavy handily in it, and governments are the entire reason the industry exists at all. without it, private companies would have slashed it to a fraction of what it is in the last decades. they cannot do so legally. games industry is purely entertainment and art.

[@joa1401]

@@00101001000000110011 but in the case of Boeing, the company’s higher ups manipulated regulators and even straight up convinced the government to let them regulate themselves. when one of their planes dropped out of the sky due to an unknown malfunction, killing every single person on board, the FAA didn’t force them to ground their aircraft while an investigation was conducted. mere weeks later, another Boeing plane of the same model dropped out of the sky, also killing everyone on board. Boeing knew what the problem was. they knew it was going to be a deadly problem when they first released their new flagship line of commercial aircraft. they released them anyway. even some of the FAA regulators knew, but didn’t speak up because they were literally employed on Boeing’s payroll. publicly they stated they were looking into the issue, but really they knew precisely what was causing the planes to crash from day one. it was a feature that was introduced as a last minute cost saving measure. engineers who pointed out it could murder people were fired. it took nearly 500 people dying horrifically for the government to finally force them to ground their aircraft so yes, they are of public interest, and governments should be intervening. but at least in the U.S. they haven’t intervened at moments that were screamingly obvious, and countless lives were lost as a result. if the U.S. government won’t step in when a company is willingly sending entire planefuls of civilians unknowingly to their deaths, when will they?

[@Fader209]

I think the Gamepass ecosystem is a big player in how crap things are today. Games themselves lose their true value and respect by simply being an acquisition for a library. The number of times I see "This would be perfect for Gamepass!" is absolutely disheartening.

[@user-gh5ng2pr8j]

Cant wait for baldurs gate 3 on gamepass next month. It would be perfect.

[@Fader209]

@@user-gh5ng2pr8j How dare you!

[@Mefrius]

Baldure's Gate 3 wasn't a masterpiece over a night. And i am not talking about it's development. ENTIRE HISTORY of Larian Studios was building up to BG3. Especially Divinity Original sin 1 and 2. And also with each project Dos 1, 2 and BG3, they were risking. If one of these games flopped, Larian would probably be gone.

[@koshetz]

Divinity 2 (not DOS2) failed commercially despite multiple re-releases and Dragon Commander wasn't successful either. Like there's a reason why DOS and DOS2 were funded by Kickstarter. So yeah Larian had amazing games but they also had their own low points and tough times.

[@user-gh5ng2pr8j]

3 years on early acess.....

[@miguelcondadoolivar5149]

​@@koshetzDivinity 2 was actually pretty decent, despite its flaws.

[@koshetz]

@@miguelcondadoolivar5149 i personally think there's no such thing as bad game by Larian and actually ment commercial failure which sometimes sadly happen even with good video games (heck i LOVE Obsidian's Tyranny but it was a big flop).

[@marloges]

@@miguelcondadoolivar5149 "pretty decent" - that game is amazing. It's arguably better than BG3 in terms of gameplay and soundtrack.

[@wingsofzero5732]

I know the Sonic 'I want smaller games' meme is just a meme, but I feel like it really does capture how I feel about AAA games as a whole. I can't even remember the last time I bought a AAA game.

[@mr.sinjin-smyth]

What Microsoft, Embracer and EA have doing recently with all the studio shutdowns and mass staff layoffs makes another video game crash like in 1983 more and more likely to happen again.

[@sidma6488]

You clearly don't know what you are talking about. Comparing the 1983 game "industry" (more like just Atari) with the current game industry is so comically stupid. Most of the game industry still sucks though.

[@SaintBehelit]

Cutting labor costs means fewer/worse products means lower sales means cutting labor costs means etc etc etc. This industry practice of severing the arm to save the body is completely unsustainable. No wonder the creeps in charge are so invested in making so-called AI work things out for them!

[@Tacom4ster]

Read Das Kapital and Peter Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, Late stage capitalism is crumbling

[@zach7]

It also won't work, not the way they've been told. it's a lot of work to even fix up most of the stuff that shit spews and it costs so much energy and is tied up in so many ethical and legal issues that it's just unfathomable to expect it to be sustainable, let alone accepted at large as though it could be done at the scale they think it can be done. the ai markets are currently all based on hype trying to get as much funding as they can to try and sustain themselves until they get massive guaranteed profits. Their sam altman is going on about nonsense like saying they need an energy revolution of fission or fusion energy generation to go beyond what they have even now. and they fill the public/shareholder's heads with tales of AGI, which is not what anyone has and it's not going to exist any time soon if ever. They are selling mechanical turks with the promise of insurmountable profits. hell most of these "ai" opperate off of constant human correction by either the "users" who pay them to fix it by telling it that it is wrong, or literally underpaid under employed third world remote workers who work to correct everything in their data bases to make sure it functions. It's insane, it runs on people. It's parasitic. just like all the C-suite types making cuts. Vampires.

[@cjyoung5635]

You do have to remember that most game companies doubled or tripled employees during covid to spread productivity and make set deadlines. It's not an excuse you can use for everything but it is still valid.

[@DaDoubleDee]

@@zach7 Great points on AI, I recently saw a music video done completely with Sora and I think we're at the tipping point of what AI can currently do, it can spew out some stuff but the "control" needed is missing, it's like playing a game but you have no control just a power button. I also saw videos on youtube of people talking about their experience using AI and a few of them admitted outright they fed anti-truths into the machine, chat gpt the prime example. I hope these massive corporations receive the biggest quarterly losses of their lives soon, we definitely need to clean house.

[@blok--head7472]

Any game that relies on AI art, voice, scriptwriting etc is immediately on my boycott list. No question. If the studios can't be bothered to get real people, then that just proves their product is as fake as it gets. A shallow imitation, nothing more.

[@DreBourbeau]

If you look at Redfall's credits, few of the leads who worked on Prey or Dishonored were still at Arkane Austin when they made Redfall. Jason Schreier reported that 70% of Prey's total developers had left by the time Redfall launched, including Prey's creative director, lead art director, lead animator, lead systems designer, and lead environmental artist. I don't want to condone Microsoft's decision to close the studio, but it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that Arkane Austin in 2024 were "the people who made Prey and Dishonored" when they weren't. It was an entirely different team.

[@uberbyte7467]

Arkane Austin also assisted with dishonored, arkane lyon were the creators of dishonored, dishonored 2 and deathloop, prey and redfall were made exclusively by Austin and both studios only share tech/ideas/assets among one another, they no longer act as one massive studio since 2014

[@JonathanTacoman]

Sounds like a sinking ship. Tango tho, that’s the most baffling one

[@Moji55a]

It was a different team thanks to Zenimax fk up, they forcing Arkane Austin to make live service games even though it's not their passion.

[@DatAsianGuy]

@@JonathanTacoman it was only sinking, because the studio was forced to make a game basically none of the devs wanted to make. So of course, with low interest in the project, morale would fall and key figures would just leave the studio and look for other projects to work on.

[@BasementMinions]

It is a sobering reminder that corporate heads look at stock value which is a made up number tied to hype and not to business fundamentals.

[@Tacom4ster]

This is why Im a communist

[@mattd5240]

​@@Tacom4sterCommunism is just as bad but in the polar opposite direction. Being somewhere in the middle would be better and less extreme.

[@thechosenbuns9991]

​@@mattd5240 Idk how well you'll read this fundamental fact about us politics, but here in America we exist in that "middle". And yeah. Even outdide of gaming, things are $ucking. BADLY. It's only gotten worse.

[@mattd5240]

@thechosenbuns9991 Used to be in the middle, now it's become far too corporate. But becoming too far left won't fix things, it'll just lead to the same problems the soviet union faced. There should be a balance.

[@Tacom4ster]

@@mattd5240 Tankies are not communists, horseshoe theory is crap, fascism is capitalism in decline

[@MegamanStarforce2010]

as the AAA industry eats itself alive, indies are proving beyond the shadow of a doubt they're the real future. Another Crab is rivaling the best of the Souls franchise for me and i couldn't be happier.

[@auno94]

And funny thing is that they keep studios that are obviously struggling (343 Industries) open, mostly becuase the IP they work on, could at some point print them money and push the graph this 1pt up

[@DaveFallows]

Halo is utterly dead. No one is ever going back to that game now in big numbers.

[@shittysingingaccount]

To be fair they fired a lot of the higher ups at 343

[@blok--head7472]

Halo Infinite, a game that was supposed to "always adding new contnent" turned out to be a complete scam. Barley any massive updates were added, other than fixing the mess 343 caused at launch, and *NO STORY MODE EXPANSIONS* , meaning the entire campaign felt like a glorified tutorial stretched out just to fill space, barley adding onto the story more than Halo 5 did, and a ungodly battlepass system that wound up damaging the game's reputation. Plus they recently reported to be done with the game altogether, so much for it being "Infinite" amirite? FFS, they literally *lied* about the game's splitscreen. They said it was planned before launch, but they backpaddled out of sheer laziness and contempt for their own playerbase. A massive disrespect for what should've been a proper Resurgence to Halo. Utterly disgraceful. Microsoft and 343 *should be ashamed of themselves* . And as a non Halo fan, That should speak volumes for how badly they F*Ed up.

[@lemonscentedgames3641]

Microsoft and 343 industries should be a masterclass on how not to handle an IP

[@HGRAP1]

The indie scene is where gaming is still alive. I thought I was tired of gaming, that maybe I had grown out of it because it no longer made me feel the sense of wonder and joy it once did. And then I played the indies I bought on steam sales for under $5… It felt like being reunited with a childhood friend. The joy I had been missing came back. It showed me I still loved games… I just hate corporate interactive experiences

[@FelisImpurrator]

Indies have been printing an unending stream of bangers month after month. It's wild.

[@StoopidSnot]

Here’s my take on this…. If a studio was closed, it should be absolutely fine to pirate any game they made, the publisher obviously didn’t care for those titles anyway and you are not supporting the dev by legally purchasing the game either. In short, F the publisher, support the people who made the games not faceless corporations.

[@MikeGemi]

I dont think labeling Larian Studios a indie studio is accurate they have the same amount of employees as Bethesda. I do get the point your making though and agree. They are a private company that doesnt have to answer to shareholders so they are free to do whatever they want which is amazing and likely the reason they can operate the way they do.

[@addex1236]

Your exactly right public trading while good for a company isn't the best for creative fields because to many people get involved in something that works best with a single induspiduted lead

[@MikeGemi]

@@addex1236 Yah without a doubt. I think also labeling them as Indie makes it seem like only indie studios are capable of doing what they did, which isnt the case.

[@00101001000000110011]

indie is literally short for "independent". independent, in context, means free from publishers and investors alike. larian meets all the criteria to be defined as indie. it's not about budget volume or employee count at all. and for a game's studio to not fall into the many traps that are so prevalent, they absolutely need to be independent and not pubicly traded or owned by a corporation that is. simple as that. it's not that only indie studios can do what they did, a corporate owned studio can have stars aligned and pull a miracle off. it's that regardless of the 1 in an astronomical number chance a studio can pull it off, it is doomed to suffer eventually if not immediately after due to the corporate bs. and that astronomical number chance, in the current decade's climate means it simply won't happen at all. any other publisher would have enforced bs monetization cus not doing so is leaving money on the table. any other publisher likely would not have allowed the budget they had for some aspects of the game, seeing it as not having enough RoI to warrant the budget allocation to those features. most likely any publisher would also have shortened the development time, which would have impacted the game quality significantly.

[@MikeGemi]

@@00101001000000110011 Larians Budget for Baldur's Gate 3 was $100,000,000 and they have 450 people working on the game that is not indie. They are a private company but to call them indie based on how people use the definition now isnt accurate. And thats fine because saying they are indie implies AAA studios cant do what Larian did. When in reality they can, but a lot of the time higher ups mismanage a project, or try to force bad practices that gamers dont like, or even has a studio making a game the developers dont even want to be making, like Redfall.

[@42crazyguy]

Yeah I think it is perfectly accurate. Independent is independent.

[@JShredz]

I really love your channel, and as someone who's spent the better part of a decade in the industry across both AAA and indie I'm acutely aware of how awful these layoffs are because they're hitting my friends and past coworkers. Real people are hurting because of poor corporate decision making coupled with short-sighted fears and an overcorrection to a slightly cooling games market post-covid, BUT... The central thrust of this video as "dodge corporate money if you're an indie" is, frankly, naive. Most studios signing publishing or acquisition deals aren't doing it because they think they'll be able to take over the world, they do it so they can try to avoid the same layoffs and studio closures we're lamenting. The problem is, "we ran out of money" is a lot less publicized than "Microsoft fired everyone", so people forget that studios and projects that are every bit the same passionate artistic endeavor die because they could never land a corporate deal. The dagger you talk about hanging over developers heads from acquisition? It's no worse than the dagger of running out of money before you hit the finish line and seeing all of your work disappear. I'm not defending the stupid layoffs or saying these studios should have been closed, but I DO want to defend the decisions of developers to try to do what was best for themselves and their studios at the time. The villains here are the mismanagers in those corporate entities, but it seems like you're backhandedly blaming indie developers with stars in their eyes for signing obviously bad deals with the devil, and that's just not the reality. Games are extraordinarily expensive, and require years of work and paid salaries and marketing dollars before they see a dime of profit. Pointing to the success of Supergiant and Larian and saying it's translatable is just straight wrong. Supergiant's first game, Bastion, was published by Warner Bros (one of those big conglomerates), and BG3 had a 9-figure budget for hundreds of staff over 6 years and was built by a studio that's been around for almost 3 decades. They're amazing studios that made amazing games, but taking their success and trying to use it as a model for other indie developers is silly. Love your stuff, love the passion, but this was just a missed attempt to apply a simple answer to a super complex industry without really understanding the full scope of the problem.

[@FatmanVanilla]

Very insightful comment, thank you 🙏

[@DaDoubleDee]

great counter point!!!

[@La0bouchere]

Yeah, I feel that the people who criticize these types of business decisions lack financial knowledge. Corporate publishing deals aren't just money that you can choose to take, they're a mechanism that literally allows a massive segment of games to even exist at all. Money is a real resource and you can't always find a way to make the budget stretch farther if you have a team. Also, while layoffs always suck, especially from corporate mismanagement, making sure you can survive one is a necessary adult skill. This doesn't mean they're always justified anything like that, but it does mean that anyone who isn't a dependent should know enough about budgeting to have it not crater your financials.

[@BradyRamaker]

It's just capitalism. Like boilerplate capitalism described 150 years ago by ol Karl Mars. The Falling Rate of Profit is a fundamental and recurring feature of the system that causes increasingly irrational decision making. The number needs to go up at the same percentage rate, and since thats impossibe and unsustainable, the investor class in control, who sees everything as naught but abstract commodities to be bought and sold start cutting and consolidating in a panic to manufacture the appearance of growth. This has happened before and it continue to happen until the capitalist mode of organization is recognized as obsolete and discarded.

[@CasieMod]

THIS. IF you want to see things change, worker owned co-ops are where it's at.

[@Crazy_Diamond_75]

I don't think anybody could possibly have put it better.

[@La0bouchere]

Yes, lets fix our economy by listening to the one guy who's responsible for the most economic disasters in all of human history.

[@Crazy_Diamond_75]

@@La0bouchere someone drank the capitalist kool-aid

[@BradyRamaker]

@@La0bouchere you lost love shooting the messenger cuz you're so very smart. Meanwhile capitalist generated climate collapse is going to kill billions sooooo

7:29 - Not the PS2, but when I played The Last of Us and GTA V on the PS3 I said to myself "I don't care if graphics get any better than this", and I still stand by it.

[@Se7enRemain]

I absolutely do care about graphics, but not if their progression is totally unsustainable. Looking back, The Last of Us and GTAV do look worse, for sure, but I don't think it matters. The consumption of art is largely about hallucination or the suspension of belief. I can go back and play 'Mark of Kri' on the PS2 and be completely immersed in that setting. Given enough talent, games can fake a space for incredibly cheap, and yet AAA markets insist upon masturbatory fidelity. I loved Red Dead Redemption 2 to death, but knowing that the final product required nearly 6 years of unbroken crunch makes me feel sick. That's a legitimately cancerous business model, and I am complicit. Shiny graphics are wonderful, but ugly games provide just as much value when viewed holistically. The ever longer dev cycles and ever ballooning budgets are absolutely nonsense.

[@Zubatticus]

During the 2008 financial crisis, video games were considered recession-proof. Corporations mentioning economic headwinds as a reason for studio closures and layoffs are full of shit and only have themselves to blame for destroying their developers' lives.

[@hplwonder4054]

And yet... Nintendo kept Monolith soft, a studio that, while successful and hits the millions (2.5M at most), are still considered underground. And really the reason is that the team is valuable in supporting Nintendo's bigger projects. Totk, animal crossing, mario, etc, monolith soft helps out with the corporate nintendo stuff so that nintendo can keep them afloat to make their artsy games, and quite frankly, I wish more studios gave that option, but instead, they buy every studio out, they hire thousands upon thousands of people... and eventually fire half of them. So... they work for corporate projects, and in return get to stay afloat while working on their projects with a good enough budget I'd say that's quite frankly the only story of an artsy team being owned by a large corp that seems to be doing shockingly well for themselves, and unfortunately, it's one of the very few in recent memory

[@darkmattergamesofficial]

The saddest thing is the people who lost their job through no fault of their own. This is a failure of leadership across the industry.

[@PostMesmeric]

Mentioning both Ninja Theory and "creative control" is actually really important to this conversation. Most of Ninja Theory's development history has come from underperforming in the eyes of the publishers that've overseen them. Whether it's Sony, Bandai Namco, or Capcom, their works didn't reach the levels that the suits wanted them to reach. But when they had the creative control awarded to them via self-publishing, here comes Hellblade, a very niche title that let the studio present a totally unique idea in the way they wanted, a way that arguably led to their strongest project. So seeing them get acquired, putting them once again under the boot of a huge publisher, I have no faith that Hellblade II will suffice in the eyes of Microsoft. Hellblade was a success story for Ninja Theory. It was everything that they simply couldn't get from a publisher, both financially and artistically. But their future is so uncertain now and that's a real shame.

[@filipvadas7602]

Ironic that a game about combatting corporate greed and immorality ended up being a victim of it IRL

[@elnacho657]

Again, Arkane Austin only made Prey and Redfall. Dishonored was made by Arkane Lyon, a studio which is still operational.

[@XrayDVD]

Prey is still fantastic enough to warrant the arguement

[@darkforge4004]

@@XrayDVD some of the key talent behind prey left the studio before redfall.

[@elnacho657]

@@XrayDVD Sadly not. The game itself was an easy 10/10 and it would have been received as such, had Bethesda let them use the original name Neuroshock. Instead, it had to be called Prey which instantly threw a good percentage of the playerbase off simply because they were still rightfully angry about Prey 2s cancellation. To be fair, this was on Bethesda, not Arkane Austin, but the people who wee actually behind Prey 17 have left the studio by now which would explain RedFalls overall quality.

[@aaryan4323]

Again, Arkane Austin did make Dishonored. The first game was co-developed by both Lyon and Austin. After that both teams started working seperately with Dis2 and Prey. The creator of the studio has clarified this a million times and people still get it wrong.

[@elnacho657]

@@aaryan4323 That´s because every source i google up says something different. The Wikipedia Article says Dishonored was all Lyons things for example. But anyway, thanks for clearing it up.

[@alextorres8635]

There is in fact a larger story underneath involving the tech industry as a whole and what hedge funds are doing that make these baffling decisions more common.

[@jesseteixeira6284]

It's private equity and neoliberal free-marketeering. It's like this in every other industry. We're only noticing now because it's affecting the bread and circuses.

[@Netherfly]

None of this is new. Publishers have been buying up and arbitrarily shutting down great studios *at least* since the 90s. The main reason Larian Studios' is so determined to *remain* independent is because they experienced a lot of that, working with publishers in the 90s and early 00s -- including *Microsoft*. It's really weird how many developers don't seem to have noticed this very clear and obvious and long-running trend, or at least don't care about it. As a big CRPG fan, it was especially disheartening to see both InXile and Obsidian allow themselves to be bought by Microsoft -- when both CEOs, Brian Fargo and Fearghus Urquhart, have been in this business for decades and know exactly how trustworthy these big corporate overlords are. Hell, MIcrosoft alone is almost as notorious for this kind of shit as Electronic Arts -- again, a reputation going back *decades.* It's never a question of *if,* only *when.* Hell, let's look back at InXile's and Obsidian's own history. Brian Fargo used to head up Interplay Entertainment, which used to be a pretty big video game publisher... but some bad decisions forced him to leave the company in 2002, after which he founded InXile, focusing on making games instead of money stuff. One might wonder just what he felt he was in exile from. Meanwhile, Black Isle Studios was responsible for some of the biggest RPGs in the history of the genre... and they got shut down just one year later, in 2003... by parent company Interplay, who was still struggling to recover from those aforementioned, unrelated, poor decisions. Those jobless developers went on to found Obsidian Entertainment, and continued to produce some of the best RPGs out there.... ...And then in 2018 both companies got swallowed up by Microsoft. Who surely *won't* ever, say, immediately shut them down after their next game releases in order to avoid paying a bunch of employees for several years while they develop a game, even though they won't be *releasing* anything in those financial quarters, and therefore won't be producing any *fiscal growth.* Nah, surely such at thing would *never* happen. Well... here's hoping, at least, that if the fine people over at Obsidian decide to keep making games after their inevitable closure, they can at least come up with another name for the company that continues the *Black* Isle legacy in their name moving forward. (

[@jasmine-ruff-puff9951]

It's very sad. I don't know how any young person could dream of working in this industry after seeing how brutal it is.

[@CowpokeRunaway]

I'm studying to become a game designer but every time i see stuff like this i doubt my choice more and more :(

[@aiodensghost8645]

I still want to work in the game industry, but I'll be doing so on my own terms.

[@greenhowie]

The industry needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. It's already speedrun through Hollywood's mistakes (and then some) but the prominence of independent media is a lot stronger and could theoretically become a basis for an entirely different structure of entertainment distribution. The problem is, it's not really been done before on such a scale and people fear change. It's not impossible though.

[@rockjianrock]

Feels like the suits kinda prefer a development studio of half a person, developing a 500-hour AAAA game, within 9 months, selling 5 million at opening with community hype spreading through word of mouth, while continuing to sell for 10 years, on their own webstore, with recurrent payments from players over its lifespan, but at the same time use minimal server costs. Then repeat next year! It might even with an award or two simply for existing.

[@blacksad23]

History repeats itself. Microsoft finds a big hit in a cell shaded, music driven, fun and quirky game only to completely ignore its existence and never push for sequels.

[@obar2415]

which game has microsoft done this before??

[@blacksad23]

@@obar2415 Jet Set Radio Future, although that's more Sega's fault for doing nothing with the IP than Microsoft

[@obar2415]

@@blacksad23 I read about it just now, isnt it getting a sequel or a reboot in 2023, I myself have played absolute masterpieces that nowadays aren't even known cuz the were cut off so bad. It's really sad.

[@aiodensghost8645]

​@@blacksad23this is the 3rd time, actually. 1st time, JSR:F. The 2nd time, Sunset Overdrive.

[@funnyguy150]

It's all eerily parallel to Hollywood in the 1960s, where a few big studios released hugely expensive, safe, boring movies that couldn't recoup their budget. The time is ripe for the Lucases, Coppolas and De Palmas of the gaming world.

[@slayertakim1]

Sadly we don't live in that environment anymore. When Lucas and Coppola were in school they went to state funded film schools. They barely had to spend a dime in order to pursue their goals. Today you can't just work a part time job and make a game or movie and have it completely change the world. Those that do barely survived and we don't know just how many people spent so much money/time making an indie game just for it to flop or for them to drop it entirely. The world we live does not allow you to make your dream project if you don't have the capital to back it

[@Crazy_Diamond_75]

@@slayertakim1 Sure you can. You just need to work 100 hours a week while attending school full time. So, 140 hours of work in a 168 hour week. No problem! Good luck getting any sleep.

[@brycejohansen7114]

It's a shame with Tango gameworks, they should have given them time to get on their feet. They earned themselves a cult following with Hi-Fi Rush and that can bleed into the mainstream but it takes time. Give them another project to complete that they are compassionate about. You don't get Witcher 3 without Witcher 2, you don't get Balder's Gate 3 without Original Sin 2. The credibility of a company takes time to form and throwing the baby out with the bath water is a stupid thing to do.

[@babalovesyou]

a very good video. the industry is looking pretty grim right now and its well portrayed by you. thanks to all the developers that make our favourite games. those gone to other industries will be missed.

[@blacksad23]

Here's the problem. Artists are not business majors. Business majors aren't artists. An industry that requires an understanding and thoughtful interrelation of both cannot thrive when neither side makes an attempt to understand and gain experience in each other's fields. The reason the industry got to where it is now was specifically because you had a generation of creatives at the very beginning suddenly being thrust into the world of business or were lucky enough to have a loyal and trustworthy stakeholder that understood business. Their insights into both fields allowed them to survive and grow. Swen Vincke of Larian Studios stands as an example of this today and it makes it easy to understand why and how he makes his decisions. However, when the discourse coming from executives is "we can't wait to get rid of creatives using ai" and artists is "ooh those dastardly executives and their STOOPID decisions" the only direction the ship can sail is down. Oh also, Private Equity practices are a cancer on our economy and desperately needs comprehensive regulation.

[@nickjones32145]

Preach it, brother. The situation in the industry is sad and maddening. Hopefully, the affected developers will land on their feet and continue to create things that they are proud of in the environments that they deserve and that deserve them in return. I have extremely low expectations for the corps, but man, I hope they get their shit together. Their current way is unsustainable.

[@thevirtuouscollector]

I still have a PS2 and a CRT TV being played almost daily and some of my friends urge me to get with the times or call me "nostalgic" and I always say a) I'm too stupid to be nostalgic and b) I love playing PS2 games because of the sheer variety of games, where you can clearly tell how developers are taking risks with games where they knew it's not the end of them if the game isn't chasing the latest trends. I still haven't gotten a PS5 simply because of the ubiquity of the catalog, the sense that most games are just a variation of one another and variety can't happen because each game is expected to be hit or the studio shuts down.

[@TheSkaOreo]

Eh…while I see your point, I don’t really buy into the “golden era of gaming” in much the same way I don’t buy a “golden era” in society at large: it’s mostly nostalgia blinding people to the fact that there were, in fact, a lot of shit. And many of the games that are beloved now absolutely were the result of publishers chasing trends.

[@loganhayse8771]

Sometimes it's fun to jump on an old console or buy one when it's cheap to just go through the catalog and see some of the wild and goofy stuff they came up with. Earlier this year, I decided to play Metal Gear Revengeance on my ps3 to completion and holy shit was that a wild and ridiculous ride.

[@itsishbish2689]

"New thing bad" really shouldn't be the message you take away from this

[@spyrochrisgaming]

Missing out on Nier Automata, MGS4, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and most importantly BALDUR'S GATE 3?

[@thevirtuouscollector]

@@spyrochrisgaming Oh i did played everything until the end of the PS4 era, just not PS5. And yes Nier is one of the best games ever made.

[@safebox36]

With Tango Gameworks and Arkane's case, it's an issue that leans heavily on the internal politics are Zenimax and Bethesda. Leaked emails after Redfall's release heavily suggest that higher-ups just straight up dislike their smaller studios even if the games both sell and review better than their larger projects. Not to mention the near-absence of marketting put into Hi-Fi Rush, and Deathloop not even getting a final release trailer until 2 weeks before it came out. Compare that with the abundance of marketting put into Starfield, the heaping of game details, and GotY contender status before we even got a single ounce of gameplay footage.

[@netherslayer3561]

I'm not sure how ANYONE thought Microsoft making itself any more of a monopolistic conglomerate was a good idea. The number of people who thought them buying ActiBlizzard/King was a good thing absolutely boggled my mind, and I can only imagine how they'll fair outside of Call of Duty and... wait no, I think that might be it going forward, actually.

[@patrickserrats6919]

Dont forget about candy crush

[@kazutrash]

Great video, this NEEDS to be talked about

[@TheTraveler980]

We are transistioning from what I would call "Tier 1 Gaming" and moving onto "Tier 2 Gaming", where Indies and AA title shine until they evolve into the new AAA standard... and Publishers get rejected.

[@TheTraveler980]

Obviously the current small studios getting shut down are not thriving, due to being under the thumb of publishers and shareholders, especially those who are too fat with aquisition to maintain themselves.

[@seanjenkins5505]

I don't know why everyone assumes HiFi Rush was a huge success on of the devs literally said it didn't make enough money. I'm not saying it was a disaster like RedFall, but all we know is the player numbers. This is a problem with entertainment in general right now a movie or a game can't take $500 million to make then just do ok. Its way too expensive to develop these huge games now it shouldn't be surprising studios are experiencing radical restructuring. Redfall was a 9 figure disaster easy.

[@DionPanday]

Because they all want to blame the “evil corporations” instead of the simplest explanation wich is its just business.

[@A1stardan]

​@@DionPanday it was Microsoft decision to put it on gamepass in day 1 with no marketing

[@waltonsmith7210]

​@@DionPandayno, the corporation is definitely evil. It shows how capitalism crushes creativity. There was no reason for their layoffs to be so drastic.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

Didn't microsoft themselves state that HiFi rush performed beyond every expectation they had of it? That sounds like a good basis to assume it was sucessfull to me, if Microsoft lied then they set themselves up for the negative reaction.

[@the_elder_gamer]

As someone who commented on this channel and elsewhere pre-pandemic about the problem of Microsoft and the consolidation of gaming with Game Pass, a problem and position routinely dismissed at the time, I still only feel frustration that most people still don't grasp what has and will continue to happen. And if I'm not mistaken, Hamish and I had a back and forth about the parallel of games and music on a rare stream during the pandemic while he was playing Descenders. I've long since abandoned major label games and would encourage everyone to seek out indies, real indies, not the studios owned by Tencent or still published by exploitative publishers, but those small teams and individuals that pour their heart and soul into their creative endeavours, you won't be missing anything. There are a pletora (about 40 in reality) quality KZbin channels dedicated to indies, seek them out, support the scene, and give the middle finger to the bankrupt capitalists sucking the life out of corporate-owned gaming. (also, don't preorder games for f* sake)

[@fakejazznut]

Microsoft have finally showed their hand, entirely focused on growth over all else. They could instead nurture these studios (which many produced games for niches less profitable), allowing them to fail and make mistakes that lead to great success. Just as the game industry no longer appreciates AA games (like Hi-Fi), the film industry has become increasingly dependent on mega-budget movies that are too big to fail. Small films have become even smaller, with nothing in between. It’s not sustainable.

[@ariowirawan16]

The demands of big company getting more and more ridiculous each year, following trend, really long hours of gameplay, high quality graphic, and getting money from gamer till the last drop It's hard not thinking developer already become machine who can always be cut if they not getting big success Nintendo is not ideal company but still proofing they philosophy can carry them soo far than other, making much more successful game and console

[@Mefrius]

Hades 2 would sell just because of the glory of the first one and reputation that SuperGiant games has. Despite me disliking gameplay of Hades and i think it's not a great or very good of roguelike, but it has amazing visuals, incredible story and it's implementation into game, voice acting, music, great reputation of the studio. All this allows for marketing good enough to recoup the costs of the game.

[@A1stardan]

I've never played a rogue like game in my life before hades and I fell in love with it I think it's doing a great job bringing in people who haven't played or don't like rogue like into the genre

[@Mefrius]

@@A1stardan Yeah, why not. But on the other side, player can get tired of Hades broken combat, and start to think that they just tired of roguelike as genre, while in reality they are tired of the Hades gameplay which doesn't have enough replay value due to some gameplay problems (all hades gameplay is just pressing X and sometimes dodging. Game doesn't force you to change strategy or to adapt to the enemy)

[@ibrahim5463]

I did not finish hades but i spent a good amount in it and honestly, dialouge and voice acting was better that gameplay, gameplay was good but the charechter and their diynamic is a cheif kiss

[@Mefrius]

@@ibrahim5463 SuperGiant were always good at that

[@imjustspirit]

Amazing video which really puts a lot into perspective. Heartbreaking to see what goes on in the industry and how quickly people choose to smother those below them before even considering taking a paycut themselves. Also nice to see what is likely to be my favourite indie game of the year, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, showed in the video.

[@highlord2841]

This is why the best AAA company’s president is a developer instead of a marketer like all the other AAA, also try and guess what company/president I’m talking about

[@frankmckenneth9254]

I agree. The marketers should stay in their lane, outside of leading companies into creative bankruptcy.

[@highlord2841]

@@frankmckenneth9254 yea, so what company do you think I was talking about

[@TheOrian34]

Miyazaki.

[@highlord2841]

@@TheOrian34 yup

[@ssj4922]

At this point, nearly every Media Industry, from Books to Movies and now Video Games, goes through a phase where at the start there's a few rough patches here and there, but there's this lighten spark in there, where creatives are all in this unspoken, but universal excitement to see what this fresh new medium has to offer and a race to realize the potential of it. After a while, a Renaissance occurs where critically acclaimed works are released time and time again, creating techniques and starting careers that are only possible within that medium, it's the time when the work in the industry goes from merely a product, to what it idealizes to be: an art form. From then on, it's like a snowball effect, the industry has more eyes, the art form is taken more serious, a larger budget is allowed for talented people to take their skills and time to take even larger risks for their ambiguous projects that didn't seem possible just decades ago. A golden age of innovation and optimization comes where boundaries are pushed and new fresh ideas take over the world by storm. Then when the pros and cons of the medium have been found, the limitations and popular tropes have been established, the unhealthy relationship between art and profit is fully realized. Bigger and bigger projects become the norm, with the big executives expecting huge returns in record time, workers are crunched into unpaid and inhabitable long shifts, while corporate overlords and investors with no industry experience breathe down their necks ready to cut them off for their benefit. Safe but cliche ideas, plot points and mechanics are overused, with new, creative and ambitious concepts being too untested, too _unsafe_ for the out of touch suits to feel 'comfortable' green lighting, and thus, the same slobb of predictable products conquer the top spot year after year.

[@fionn2220]

The thing about profit margin focused decisions in this context is that I suspect the emphasis is far more on the "margins" rather than on the profit. These investors dont care that hi fi rush recouped their likely small development costs and made a decent profit on top of that, the conversation about them didnt go like "Are these guys a net profit for us? If so, just let them keep doing whatever.". Instead, their worth was judged on the basis of "is this team capable of making us [arbitrary percentage] more than they currently do in the future on a regular basis? If not, shut them down." and they very found wanting in that stupid regard.

[@baitposter]

Sounds like we have a gold-hoarding dragon problem

[@gethinfiltrator6700]

Consolidation never leads to good things. Just look at mainstream media now. It's just six giant companies. The mainstream media is festering corpse at this point and the gaming industry can take a few points at least from there.

[@Hynotama]

I don’t think that graphics “peaked” with the PS2, but rather that the limited resources required more interesting art direction. The ps3/x360 era is well known for its push of ultra realistic and boring brown art direction for games. There were very few games where the graphics and art direction legitimately contributed to the game’s atmosphere (off the top of my head, I remember Assassin’s Creed 2, Darksiders 2 Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and Sonic Unleashed). And honestly, it’s not much different these days. Games that genuinely look interesting are usually remakes, such as Spyro or MediEvil, or artsy fartsy indie games. Although, props should be given to Ghost of Tsushima, which created some truly stunning vistas in-game.

[@ElkiLG]

Reading about the news yesterday legitimately bummed me out. It's just really sad hearing about more and more studios closing down because of bad decisions made by executives. So many people are put in difficult situations for the sake of chasing infinite growth. I hate the system.

[@NoName......]

"System" just call it what it is. It's capitalism

[@aureateseigneur5317]

Just a quick correction but Arkane Austin did not make Dishonored.

[@Iggsy81]

Wasn't Tango already a shadow of the team that made their previous titles? I dont really see many ppl mention that

[@HalfpennyTerwilliger]

Shinji Mikami, founder of Tango and video game legend (Resident Evil, Dino Crisis znd God Hand at Capcom, Vanquish at Platinum Games, Evil Within at Tango) left a few months ago. Ikami Nakamura, lead on Ghostwire Tokyo left before the release of the game to create her own studio. John Johanas was the remaining lead (Evil Within 2 and Hi-Fi Rush).

[@probablythedm1669]

It does make sense! *It's all about reccurrent revenue.* A single sale is not the model that can sustain the costs of these AAA studios need for ever increasing profits, hence the push for live service titles. Why? Because they cost about the same as any AAA game but they have the potential for years or decades of constantly generating income through in-game purchases and subscription fees. People buy in-game transactions like toilet paper in a pandemic and the market is adapting. "It's just cosmetic, it doesn't affect the game." was always a willfully ignorant response. It not only affects the game, it is shaping the whole industry. AAA companies will make more of what sells and cut what does not generate the amount of constant revenue they need.

[@ben8692]

This is some great timing tied in with Skill Ups also fantastic video on this topic. Really glad you guys are both shining a light on this! Why would devs want to sacrifice salary and location for a company that fires them even when they produce a success

[@sebbyterasu78]

From my perspective, we need smaller, tighter made games that are sold as products instead of insidiously engineer them as service games to be played in perpetuity. Smaller budget games made my talented developers with sensible profit margins. I shy away from everything 'big' because I appreciate a tightly woven gameplay experience than having to sink hour upon hours in a repetitive gameplay loop to see 'number go up'. I recently replayed The Last Story a 27 hour RPG that did not waste my time and it gave me what I wanted: a fun battle system and a good story. Imagine: you could sink 100 hours in FFVII Rebirth completing it or you could have experienced the original FFVII and another awesome game in that same amount of time.

[@Argusthecat]

On the graphics thing, I've been playing Abiotic Factor with a partner lately. It looks like Half Life. Not Half Life 2, just... Half Life. Character models are low-poly blobs, animations are chonky, the whole thing looks like it fell out of 1998. And it looks AMAZING. The entire game is a beautiful work of artistic design, ditching fidelity in favor of aesthetic coherence, and it's absolute proof that games don't need to look like blockbuster movies in order to be a hell of a lot of fun.

[@moremoor8295]

Arkane Lyon made dishonored, not Arkane Austin

[@NPK476]

🤣That's like saying The White sox won the World Series in 2005, not the Red Sox. No one cares.

[@xerosolar307]

Arkane Lyon made Dishonored 2, Dishonored was a joint effort, but the directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith were mainly in Austin

[@Farron6]

Long term sustainable growth over short term profits is the only way the games industry in its's current form is going to survive. I don't know another industry that sacks it's skilled employees so frequently yet still expects to release good products.There's a few companies like Larian and Supergiant who like you have said are good examples to follow. They originally didn't release massive hits at first but have slowly built up their teams and skill sets to reach a point where they CONSISTENTLY create good products so that their fanbases will loyally buy them as the trusting relationship is already there. Strange how the Japanese companies with the exception of SEGA have largely bucked this trend with FromSoftware, Sony and Nintendo not announcing the same massive layoffs their Western counterparts are so keen to do yet look at the consistency of good games from that part of the world. My only hope is that the 1000s of unemployed staff are able to coalesce into the game companies of the future who will stamp over these broken monoliths of greed.

[@amerikaOnFire]

Wonderful video and well stated. Luckily indies are getting much bigger and better while keeping it all reasonable and not needing to make ALL THE MONEY. The problem is that a lot of these companies are owned by a person or a few people, and since they can get generational wealth from selling to a large corp, they do it. It's understandable, but it perpetuates the cycle we are seeing. I'd love to see more studios pop up that are advertise as employee owned and/or affiliated with an external union. Build up via that way and then you can't have the 1 or 2 sell out. And you won't lose your job because your team probably can't go work in the Call of Duty mines and it's faster/cheaper to close it than sell you off (especially since anybody buying would want those potentially valuable IP rights that big companies will never use again). With that said, what was the car game with the yellow taxi at around the 08:18 point?

[@KnightSoulsG]

Rip Xbox 🙏

[@rickimaru915]

To quote Stephanie Sterling, “corporations don’t want to make some of the money, they want to make ALL of the money”

[@IcyXzavien]

The only way a studio can survive (at least one tied to a big company) is by making CoD or GTA numbers. I love the concept of infinite growth, and totally don't think that leads to decisions that negatively effect employees and consumers.

[@mackielunkey2205]

Hearing about the news makes me really afraid for other studios under Microsoft, like Obsidian and Double Fine. Especially the latter.

[@joeh5511]

So glad I grew up in the 90s/early 2000s. The games just kept getting better and better until they didn't. DMC, Ninja gaiden, MGS, Jak 1-3. Gran turismo 1-3, NFS Underground. Zelda. FF6, 7, 8, 9 10. Dark souls. Rome total war.Gears of war, Halo 3 Dawn of war 1-2. Diablo, WOW. I lived through the golden age of gaming, and I'll always remember that time

[@iangaskins3843]

I'm glad you brought up Ninja Theory. I remember being uneasy when they announced that Microsoft bought them after Hellblade, since it seemed - based on their development diaries during its production - that one of the major points of the game was to prove you could create a successful AA title that was artistic as well as independent. Selling to Microsoft flew in the face of that. I'm not throwing shade or anything towards the studio. I just remembered thinking why sell to Microsoft when your game is obviously successful, and you can continue to make more games in the AA space.

[@philjohn2649]

Important content to make, well done on doing it. Have a few friends and family members studying to go into this 'industry'.

[@hrnekbezucha]

It's the same thing that happens to movies too, don't you think? Ludicrously massive budgets, every drop of life squeezed out of artists, and executives raking in huge wads of cash at everyone else's expense. F this, indies is where it's at.

[@songworks17]

It's baffling to me how such companies (or specifically their management) "cut costs" by firing entire studios and the next week they get new boni and increases in the eight digits. Wasn't there a recent example? Publisher gets rid of a studio and at the same time the CEOs yearly compensation more than doubled to something ludicrous like 48 million USD? So much money they could've kept the studio running for two years or so, making a proper product they'd all profit from. Insane. Anyway. It sucks for the developers, but I'm starting to more and more vote with my wallet. What else can I do.

[@LftClik]

fyi, Arkane Austin made Redfall and Prey. Arkane Lyon made Dishonored and Deathloop

[@Leahcimmichael]

Any chance of getting more Prey was ruined this week. Such a shame

[@Sci-Fi_Freak_YT]

I wanted a PREY 2 so badly, like holy crap I’m furious.

[@grfrjiglstan]

This was the perfect time for Dunkey’s company to publish its first game, Animal Well, which has already been receiving heaps of praise from critics and audiences alike. Game Grumps accomplished a similar feat with Dream Daddy years back. If youtubers are able to successfully publish great games with no big corporations involved, what the hell are those corporations even good for?

[@charlesshamseldin9555]

Good analysis. Subbed

[@WillCalwell]

The shareholders need growth. Profits are not enough anymore.

[@queztocoaxial]

Then let's get rid of the shareholders.

[@LPW638]

Think about how insane that actually sounds for all the people involved in building these games. "i.e. It's not good enough for your game to be profitable". That is indicative of a system that makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.

[@Subpar1O1]

​@@LPW638look at Helldivers 2. Sony was willing to possibly ruin one of their biggest hits and one the only games you'd buy a PS5 for, to artificially raise PS Network numbers, something that does not by any realistic measure have more value than simple monetary gain. This industry has evolved past the point of cartoonish corporations that only want money.

[@TackerTacker]

I'm pretty sure those studios got shut down because they were incapable of, or not willing to go down the GaaS ( Games as a Service ) route.

[@TheRealJackArthur]

Awesome video project man. Loved it and hit the nails on the head! Some of the things I personally believe we need to return the games industry to full glory; new/refreshing ideas, smaller teams and smaller scoped projects! Oh, AND MORE SUPPORT FOR INDIE AND AA TITLES!

[@gentlemanscarecrow5987]

Tango and Arkane deserved better. They insisted on taking creative risks that most studios avoid. Their games will always be classics

[@uhobme2028]

The Lyon division covers most of the Arkane's catalogue, I believe Austin's only output was Prey (2017) and Redfall, which doubly maddening considering the tremendous potential they displayed with the former was forcibly snuffed out by the latter. Wanted to be optimistic about Tango but the type of (pretty good) experiences they put out in the current gaming landscape, Microsoft's track record being what it is, I figured no matter how well they did they'd eventually end up a casualty.

[@roy4173]

This is what happens when executives who are completely detached from the development process and shareholders who only care about bolstering their stock portfolios make all the decisions. We need a games industry-wide strike. Workers deserve a seat at the table for all the sacrifices they make, just to be discarded like trash when they've outlived their usefulness.

[@nwilbur95]

You hit the nail on the head. I don't have anything to add, but I wanted to comment so this gets in front of more people :D

[@mark7rowe]

6:30 h/t for the Jesus Lizard reference, which in turn brings me to the Problem With Music essay, relevant here, a mere three days after the author's death - RIP, Albini

[@paulamblard3836]

from what i heard about a "Larian's BG4" : it didn't append because the contract Wizards of the Coast offered were too bad for Larian.

[@redherronrecords]

Great video, you earned a new subscriber. As an aside: one of my bandmates got signed years ago, built the audience, recorded an immaculate album... And then got dropped and has been unable to release said album. Now the poor bastard has to be in a band with me. End corporate greed, dude, nobody should have to be in a band with me.

[@ZorroLocoStudios]

Perfect explanation, thank you

[@yblue6116]

i hope the industry and *specially* the developers can survive all the corporative bullshit. better times will come

[@aliveormedicated]

loved the video. loved seeing SIEGE live. you went full circle just as i did. punk rock > video games > economics. finding the connecting threads between these three seemingly unrelated spheres will teach you plenty!

[@WritingOnGames]

Hell yeah, noticed the Converge reference in your username too haha.

[@aliveormedicated]

@@WritingOnGames good eye! i’d love to know what grand conclusions you’ve come to. not that it’s any of my business of course. but where do you stand on free markets? capitalism?

[@tobynormoyle637]

I think this is a good lesson to not sell out to a large corporation. When I worked in games every studio closure or lay off came as the result of a sell out. So really, we should put some blame on the studio heads that choose to sell out to bigger companies. Their greed is what starts the process.

[@connorbutters8479]

Really feels like we're on the verge of another games market crash at the moment. Likely because AAA became too reliant on investor money and the ESG investments. Now they're pulling out because investors have no respect for art and the games aren't reaching desired sales or desired ESG benchmarks for inclusion and accessibility And now all that big corpo money is leaving and the companies that relied on it can't sustain themselves

[@narpassword3546]

Excellent video

[@SerpC]

Great video. So sad